I graduated from Dartmouth College in 2013, majoring in History and Sociology. At college, I was a columnist The Dartmouth, Dartmouth's student newspaper, and the founder and editor-in-chief of The Hump-Day Gazette, Dartmouth's journal of sex and sexuality. Previously, I've worked for Mental_Floss blog and magazine. At Forbes, I hope to offer a fresh perspective for ambitious individuals sorting out what matters in business, entrepreneurship, tech, leadership and more. Find me on Twitter at @Kate_H_Taylor.

Why Millennials Are Ending The 9 To 5

The 9 to 5 job may soon be a relic of the past, if Millennials have their way. A slow climb in a company was once the accepted career path. However, today the experiences of men and women starting their careers are closer to juggling multiple positions than steady growth.

Freelancing and self-employment are on the rise. Meanwhile, 60% of Millennials are leaving their companies in less than three years. With 87% of companies reporting a cost of between $15,000 and $25,000 to replace each lost Millennial employee, industries need to start paying attention to structural changes. Reports and studies seem to indicate three roots to Millennials’ discontent and the resulting upheaval: the drives for flexibility, purposeful labor and economic security.

A recent Millennial Branding report found 45% of Millennials will choose workplace flexibility over pay. Dori Albert, crowdscourcing practice manager at Lionbridge Technologies Inc., stated that Millennials helped create a “new nature of work,” with increasing reliance on the gig economy and freelancing. Lionbridge began as a translation focused site, but has expanded to provide crowdsourced employees to a wide range of industries including companies such as NokiaNokia, MicrosoftMicrosoft and ExpediaExpedia.

sLionbridge’s 100,000 crowd worker are united by their drive for flexible labor. This includes stay-at-home mothers, retirees and Millennials, who make up 53% of crowd workers. “A generational change is occurring,” said Albert, who believes crowdsourcing to be key for Millennials seeking employment on their own terms.

The second feature Millennials are seeking is work with a greater purpose. Millennials have been pegged as a generation committed to change. 72% of students, as opposed to 53% of workers, consider having “a job where I can make an impact” to be very important or essential to their happiness. Social entrepreneurship has exploded in the last ten years, going from an undefined phrase to a program offered at more than 30 business schools . Outside of making meaningful change in their community, Millennials are seeking meaningful connections at work – 71% want their coworkers to be their “second family.”

The search for these qualities results, according to Millennial Branding’s founder Dan Schawbel, to the swift turn over for Millennial employees. The same survey that found that 60% of Millennials left their company in less than three years discovered that the primary indicator of whether Millennials stay at a company is if there is a “good cultural fit.” While the term is nebulous, Millennials increasingly require some aspect of personal fulfillment from their jobs, and are willing to walk if they do not find it.

The final piece of the puzzle is economic concerns. Much of the discussion of Millennials has downplayed the economic necessity of career decisions, a reductive position that few are able to afford. Dori Alberts reported that most Lionbridge crowd workers were employed with the company as a second job. Websites that allow for flexible labor are in high demand. Millennials don’t just value flexible labor – they need it to make ends meet.

Millennials entered the job market in the wake of the recession. Unemployment rates for 20-to 24-year olds currently hover around 13%. Millennials are conditioned to expect economic disruption, and have thus become risk adverse. Outside of economic caution, rates of alcohol use, drug use and sexual activity have declined. Thus, job turn over and exploration of more flexible labor sources reveal Millennials’ fear of putting all their (career) eggs in one basket.

The question then becomes: how can employers shift to better fit these core needs of Millennials? The quick turn over of Millennial workers is costing employers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Perhaps employers need to embrace the changing workplace, with increased freelancing, crowdsourcing and flexible hours. In this manner, companies can create a workplace where taking on different roles and jobs fulfill different aspects of Millennial’s career requirements. This generations’ priorities are not radically different than those of earlier generations – they are just attempting to meet their needs in different ways.

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I think that some select areas will find ways to accommodate millennial out of the need for workers of that specific age range. However with Boomers staying in the work force far longer than any expected, and with GenX firmly entrenching itself for the next 30 years, there may never be a groundswell of movement to accommodate the “kids.” The reason is simply because there will not actually be a need to accommodate them.

I think the Millenials of today are the “Twentynothings” from the early 1990s. A group caught between two larger and faster and more aggressive generations.

Within another few years there will be still younger and more weary kids coming out of college, forewarned of the economy and workplace. This new generation will be what dictates change. Even if employers start to change, the Millenials will have aged out of their youthful fits and demands. Or at least they’ll have ceased having enough clout to make a difference either way.

You want to know how businesses can keep younger people for longer terms? Here are a few answers. First, treat young people with some respect. I’ve seen too many times that a young person has an idea, and an older manager basically chews them out for having a different idea from theirs. Also I’ve seen young people get thrown under the bus when a new process goes wrong. They don’t seem to care that the idea came from an upper level manager and was shared among a diverse team, but they seem to care by finding a scapegoat and shifting blame onto the most expandable people.

Second, end the common hypocrisy in the workplace. I’ve seen too often young people who want to get involved more with different projects, or wanting to go to a conference workshop to learn more by getting denied by management with the experience or money complaints. First of all, how do you get experience? You need to work on a project to get experience, but somehow managers believe for you to get experience you should have experience in your first job. No surprised there is a disconnect there.

Then the finance issue is a kicker as there is so much hypocrisy among management and low level employees. One time the managers at a company meeting mention they want new employees to go to this conference to learn more. The conference was literally down the street, but every low person got denied due to financial reasons. Meanwhile that same manager and owner had to go on their 5th trip to San Francisco this summer for, another conference. Wow, and then they are shock that the low level people feel left out. I’ve seen it happen to mid level engineers who wanted to go a regional conference nearby got denied due to finance issues, but the plant manager and his buddy had to go to Japan for two weeks on a “observe and analyze” tour of total productive management which they don’t even utilize anymore. You have to wonder how disconnect from reality you have to be as a leader to not understand why low level employees see you as a hypocrite.

Third, companies need to stop being cheap on training. Too often nowadays training has been cut short, or it has become inadequate. I’ve seen upper managers shock that a low level employee is struggling with some aspects of their software platform, but when you look at his training he basically got a simple power point and that was it. Then I’ve seen their direct managers get “too busy”, or lazy from helping them when they are having issues. What is sad is the struggling employee instantly gets flag and they are quickly ready to demonize him and chew him out, but you rarely see a manager step up and help him through the process.

Fourth, get rid of this knee jerk reaction environment that is common. Too often when someone makes a mistake a manager or two seem to jump off the grid and enter full panic mode. I’ve made a mistake of mistyping a response once, and holy crap, the managers were chewing me out and spouting the company mantra, the importance of this contract, and how I could jeopardize everything. Being naive I admitted I would take full responsibility for my actions if anything bad happen as it was my mistake. The next day it was never brought up again and nothing happen. What they did accomplish though was creating an environment of fear. This fear that is common in the workplace environment nowadays because this level of drama and fear has been self inflected by leaders. There are times a mistake is serious, but more often then not a mistake is usually a simple fix and nothing is at stake. If someone mistyped a number on a report, then there is no reason to chew out an employee and act like a disaster is afloat when that isn’t the case.

Finally, have realistic job expectations and goals. Why on earth are there so many “entry level” jobs asking people with 2-3 years of experience in that field and specific software like SAP and Six Sigma. What, do they honestly believe all recent grads were able to utilized that software in their classes? The answer is no, and it was is sad is I’ve heard HR and managers complain that they need people now, but are shock they can’t find anyone. Well look at your requirements as chances are they are being way too picky. It’s one thing expecting someone to have a relevant degree in that line of work, it’s another when the job listing is 2 pages long of requirements with the expectation that it’s fair for an entry level job asking for several years of experience.

Thank you so much for posting this. I’m 31 so I’m on the older side of the millennial generation, but I changed “careers” (if you can call it that, ha) a couple of times during the recession and got pretty badly sidelined due to almost 4 years of not working enough (I was freelance at the time) and not getting paid enough…in part because it was so hard to find something to DO for work! So, I can’t necessarily relate to a lot of this site’s content given that I haven’t spent a ton of time WITH a “normal job” and spent most of my post-college years freelancing. But now that I HAVE a “normal job” (aka 9-to-5, although it’s more like a 12-to-8!), I can reflect equally on the struggle it can be to make the most of it, AND the struggle it was to get it. I’m really glad you said this because I’m so sick of the baby boomers slamming us when half the time I feel like, hey buddy, we’re picking up YOUR messes so what the #$@ do you want from us?!

Because, yes. An “entry-level” job should not require 3 years of experience. Unpaid internships should not exploit people who are new to their trade/business by requiring that they do WORK which others get paid for. And this whole assumption that we’re supposed to be slaves to our jobs for over 40 hours a week is ridiculous. And finally, like you said, training is critical.

How dare millennials have the audacity to want a job that matters and doesn’t suck the life out of them. Who do we think we are?! ;)

As Patrick pointed out, if you don’t care about people, you can’t retain Millenials, as we either get burned out, or walk out.

The same is with regard to planet. You have to take the ecological, habitat, and fair trade issues under consideration.

If your company makes a widget, in a factory produced under near slave labor conditions, and yet the reason for that is because you refuse to pay your supplier a little bit more per item so that their workers can afford to have a decent life… You can’t really expect to retain Millenials. We don’t condone that.

Same if the product is actually making life worse for animals, ecology, or habitat.

You can’t treat your employees like disposable “resources,” your suppliers like crap, jerk your customers around (like cell phone companies do), and treat the planet and the environment like it’s a pack of smokes to be burned through and tossed in the garbage can… and expect Millenials to work for you.

And fake ethics: paper statements, “corporate social responsiveness”, PR, faux/procrastination/delay efforts, pretend responsibility efforts that are really just meant to deflect criticism for a little while…

We see right through that stuff and that doesn’t work for us either. It has to be real, actual, ethical behavior.

As Google said: “do no evil.”

We want to feel good coming to work, like we’re making the world a better place, not just using it and being used for money.

That doesn’t fly with us.

Ethics. It starts and stops with ethics.

If you are an ethical company (a truly ethical company), you won’t have any problem hiring us, or keeping us.

There hasn’t been much 9-to-5ing going on these days anyway. I’m a Gen Y officially, but I have not worked a 9-5 job in 15 years. Most of the people I work with don’t work a 9-5 job; instead, they do project work. Contracting allows much more flexibility. There is so much consulting and freelance work going on at this time, Millennials will fit right in. It’s already going on.

Spot on Kate! The work place is witnessing radical change. The baby boomers used to work 9 to 5 in order to balance life and work. While for them it was just about ‘balancing’, for the GenY it is enjoyment in all tasks they take and happiness at work. Big difference. We have a huge workforce falling into the Millennial category. If the workplace is able to tap the potentials of this workforce… great improvement is possible both in terms of innovation & productivity. Social collaboration could help the millennials unleash their disruptive ideas and add value to the enterprise they work.

You have to have people on either side of this smaller generation that are going to accept what they do. Plus you have to place these Millennials into positions they can ever actually have some impact in. Most will not land in their idea jobs, have no clout to sway companies to change, and for all the idealisim will be absorbed as a majority into the workforce. Caught between two larger generations less impacted by either the economy or newness of things destined to become passe and routine within a matter of a few years.

The problem with assuming that being part of the latest “disruptive” generation is that there is always another one coming just behind, and the “new” ideas and tools become either old-hat or just another area for business and industry to bend to their core culture.

Social collaboration is just a modern spin with a few technical aspects on what people have written books and tried to teach business’ to do for a hundred years.

All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. Including the inability of new generations to widely recognize how painfully un-new and little they will change anything.

Call me a devils advocate, flame what I say if it doesn’t sit well with you. (not speaking directly to anybody as such) However history bares out that change comes slow.

As I sit on my back porch, enjoying breakfast with my wife, this article brings back thoughts of another life. The previous life had me chasing the corporate ivory tower, however that came to a crashing halt, due to divorce. As I’m happily married a second and final time, I am now working to achieve the work/family balance, with a major focus on family first. Many of my coworkers, whom were also former executive management, now focus on family then work as well. I now find myself focusing on what makes me happy in a job, versus climbing the corporate ladder. My new executive management is young and exactly where I was 15 years ago and simply doesn’t understand what is at stake by being self professed “workaholics’. My new work focus is what makes me happy and what enables me to focus on being a dad and a husband, while maintaining an income. I have decided to let our executives fight it out amongst themselves and I’ll perform my job, to the best of my abilities, while also performing my jobs as father and husband. I must admit that sometimes I think about a return to executive ranks, however mornings like this, without worrying about work constantly are what life is about.

You can’t expect to eat the cake and have it too. Either one steps forward and leads by example or accepts what comes from that choice. To lead you will pay a price in leisure time. It will require you to make hard choices, work a bit more than others, and otherwise do a lot of things entirely opposite to what the Millennials in this article are striving for.

If one is fine with working less and being happy with what that produces, more power to them. This is a nice realistic approach given that most Millennials will not reach the level of comfort and such that their grandparents achieved. If these younger people expect the world to give more for less, they’ll be run over like road kill by the GenX’ers and Boomlet generation coming behind them. Because neither generation will cut them any slack.

I had this whole long diatribe written where I was going to try and correct your incorrect assumptions. Then it hit me. It’s in my best interest to let you believe the wrong things. I will be able to out compete you in the marketplace. BTW I’m a Millennial.

I think we need an expansion of Google’s (former) slogan “Don’t Be Evil.” We all know that the corporate, financial and social orders (think Walmart, banking industry and inequality/Gerrymandering) are evil, and becoming more so. You won’t get away with a bit of fluff. We need deep structural change.

Between internet surfing, breaks, texting, meetings, and personal appointments, there isn’t a millennial or anybody else in the entire United States who “works” 9 to 5. They are all goofing off or hiding in their cubicles daydreaming about traveling and dinner plans.